It’s time a proper hammer was taken to the Brando reputation, degrading the muscle bound Method roles of the 50’s that made his reputation and eulogising the indulgent, self-referential performances of his portly years. I doubt Buff Brando did anything that Montgomery Clift or Paul Newman couldn’t have done with a lot less fuss. But Fat Brando’s achievements are unique, performances that lift him clear of all competition and Last Tango is one of his key performances.

When it was released in 1972 it was the sex scenes that had pensioners bussing in from the provinces for a look at the depravity. Thirty plus years on it’s the miracle of Marlon that compels. He’d just given his last disciplined performance in The Godfather and having not found enough satisfaction in that appears to have decided that from then on he would be doing it for himself. He made the whole damn movie about him.

His performance as widower Paul is like an authorised negative biography. He spews out personal anecdotes and reels through the accent repertoire with dismissive abandon as he plays out his love/ hate relationship with the worthless profession that made his name. He’d come not to praise Brando but to bury him and yet by sheer force of personality it becomes triumph.

It’s a ludicrous, monstrous indulgence and it ought to be repellent but it’s mesmerising. It’s the freakish combination of that great clump of head, his preposterous good looks, that voice and the way that he seems to always be addressing some unseen presence a foot or so in front of his nose. It’s easily imitated but impossible to match.

The film itself is emptily pretentious and ridiculous. The moments when he’s not on screen are tortuous. Schneider is almost like a sacrificial lamb offered up for him to torment but she holds up better than she is given credit for. The scenes though with Leaud as her boyfriend must rank among the most loathed and skipped through in all cinema.